Saturday, December 9, 2017

Matthew Caley's Thirst [Slow Dancer, 1999] was nominated for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Since then he's published four more collections - The Scene of My Former Triumph [ Wrecking Ball, 2005] , Apparently [ Bloodaxe, 2010], his 'lost 2nd collection Professor Glass [ Donut, 2011] and his latest Rake [Bloodaxe, 2016]. He's read his work at numerous venues both here and abroad including The Royal Festival Hall, KIng's Place, The National Portrait Gallery and The Gypsy Hill Tavern, London; Alchemy in Prague; Paris Lit Up; The Novi Sad International Poetry Festival, Serbia ; Ledbbury, Aldeburgh and STANZA festivals.

Dom
Bury is a writer and a poet who runs workshops on nature, ecopoetry and
the emotional impact of climate change. He is a recipient of a 2016 Eric Gregory Award, a 2016 Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship, has won The Magma Poetry Prize, 2nd Prize in The Resurgence Ecopoetry Competition and was named as a finalist in the Ballymaloe International Poetry Competition. His poems have been published in places such as Poetry London,Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales and Best British Poetry.

Ben Parker’s debut pamphlet, The Escape Artists, was published byTall-Lighthouse in 2012 and shortlisted for the 2013 Michael MarksAward. He spent a year as Poet-in-Residence at The Museum of RoyalWorcester, and in 2016 was Poet-in-Residence at The Swan Theatre,Worcester. His debut collection, The Amazing Lost Man, is published byEyewear. He is poetry editor of Critical Survey.

Kim Moore's first collection The Art of Falling was published by Seren in 2015 and a poem from the collection was shortlisted for The Forward Prize. Her first pamphlet
If We Could Speak Like Wolves
was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. She won
an Eric Gregory Award in 2010 and a Northern Writers Award in 2014.
She is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine,
a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective, and also serves as a
chair of the writer development organization Spread The Word. His debut
collection Ticker-tape is published by Nine Arches Press.

In 2017, Nine Arches Press published Tania Hershman's debut
poetry collection, and her third short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More
Than Others, was published by Unthank Books. Tania is also
the author of a poetry chapbook, and two short story collections, and co-author of Writing
Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury,
2014). Tania
is
curator of ShortStops (www.shortstops.info),
celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland and is
completing a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. www.taniahershman.com

John Row, poet and storyteller has been performing since the 1970’s when he toured with Nick Toczek’s Stereo Graffiti, poetry and music show. Since then he has toured both as a solo artist and with a variety of musicians from different genres appearing on four continents and has been a regular guest at the Austn International Poetry Festival as well as music festivals throughoutEngland. He has been writer in residence at four different prisons and has visited over thirty prisons and young offender establishments. His work is a mixture of the political and personal. He published latest chap book ‘ImpureTheatre’ earlier this year. www.johnrow.com

She
has been described as ‘A poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Dongohue and
as ‘a poet who surely can who can do anything' in The North. Tears in the Fence
said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath – with all its alpha
achievement and radiance’.

Anna holds a Masters in Creative
and Critical Writing from The University of Gloucestershire and is the CEO and
founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

James Sheard is the author of Hotel Mastbosch (2003), Scattering
Eva (2005), Dammtor (2010) and The Abandoned
Settlements (2017). When away from his writing desk, he
assists Emergency PoetDeborah
Alma as poetic medic, ambulance driver and dispenser of poemcetamols.
Jim’s work has received the Ictus Prize and been named Poetry Book
Society’s Pamphlet Choice as well as Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
It has also been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best
First Collection and the Glen Dimplex Award for Poetry. He
is currently in his 11th year of teaching at Keele University.

Deborah
Alma has an MA in Creative Writing, taught Writing Poetry at Worcester
University and works with people with dementia and in hospice care. She is also
Emergency Poet prescribing poetry from her vintage ambulance. She is editor of Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry
anthology, The Everyday Poet- Poems
to live by ( both published by Michael O’Mara), and her True Tales of the Countryside is
published by The Emma Press. Her first full collection will be published by
Nine Arches Press in April 2018. She lives with her partner the poet James
Sheard on a hillside in Powys, Wales.

Dawn
Gorman is a freelance editor and arts events organiser. Her
pamphlet This
Meeting of Tracks was published in the Pushcart
Prize-nominated four-poet
book Mend & Hone (Toadlily Press, 2013). Her work
has appeared in
literary journals such as The Rialto,
Iota and The Interpreter’s House, and in anthologies
including DE4 | A1
(Templar Poetry, 2016), Salt on the Wind
(elephantsfootprint, 2015) and The Book of Love &
Loss (Belgrave Press, 2014). In 2015, the Orchestra of
the
Age of Enlightenment, together with 250 schoolchildren, wrote
a symphony based
on her poem Replenishment;
a film
poem devised as the overture appeared at Cannes Short Film
Festival that year. For
the past two years she has worked as a poet in residence at
the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival. She works with poetry with adults and
children in community
settings and runs a monthly reading series, Words & Ears,
in Bradford on
Avon. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath

Rosie Jackson
lives in Frome and runs creative writing workshops. Her poetry pamphlet What the Ground Holds (Poetry Salzburg,
2014) was followed by her first collection The
Light Box (Cultured Llama, 2016) and her memoir The Glass Mother(Unthank,
2016). Her poetry has been published in Acumen, Ambit, Frogmore Papers, Tears
in the Fence and other journals and anthologies, set for GCSE, and used for a
large copper sculpture in the grounds of a Dorchester hospital. She won jointfirst prize in the Bath Poetry Competition
2015, Second Prize in Battered Moons 2015, 1st and 2ndprizes in the Berkshire Festival in both
2016 and 2017. She is a Hawthornden fellow 2017 and has taught in many
educational and community venues including the University of East Anglia,
Bethesda Writers’ Centre Washington DC, Skyros Writers’ Lab and the Open
College of the Arts. Her books of prose include Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Frieda Lawrence, Mothers Who
Leave and shehas won awards for
her short stories. www.rosiejackson.org.uk

Isobel Dixon was born in
South Africa, where her debut Weather Eye
won the Olive Schreiner Prize. She studied in Scotland and now lives in
Cambridge. Her fourth collection Bearings was published by Nine
Arches in April 2016, with re-issues of A
Fold in the Map and The Tempest
Prognosticator forthcoming in 2017. Her pamphlet, The Leonids, was published by Mariscat in August 2016. She is
currently working on a project about D H Lawrence with the Scottish artist Doug
Robertson, linked to Lawrence’s collection Birds,
Beasts and Flowers.

Gregory Leadbetter was born in Stourbridge in 1975. His debut full-length poetry collection, The Fetch, was published by Nine Arches Press in October 2016. His pamphlet The Body in the Well was published by HappenStance Press in 2007. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The North, Magma, The Rialto, on BBC Radio 4, and in CAST: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (Smith/Doorstop, 2014), as well as other journals and anthologies. His book of literary criticism, Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) won the University English (formerly CCUE)
Book Prize 2012, and he has published essays on Wordsworth, Keats,
Charles Lamb, and Ted Hughes. He has written radio drama for the BBC,
and was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2013. He currently teaches
at Birmingham City University, where he is Reader in Literature and
Creative Writing. www.gregoryleadbetter.blogspot.co.uk